And so, man, the master mind of creation, asserts his authority, and the maids troop down, heavy-eyed and stupid with sleep; and bake and roast, and giggle hysterically under their breaths, and tell stories of other masters they have served, and goings on, and grind fresh coffee-beans, and have white bread and lump sugar and cold fowl, for there is no one to say them nay, and the larders are full of good things; and only the pale little mistress knows how near the grand place is drawing to bankruptcy. Morning came, and the table was decked and the dinner served, and taken out again untasted; and another storm simmered all through the sunny forenoon, to burst like a hurricane over the house at noon. The kitchen is empty and the fire has gone out; a wreck of crockery shows where the storm raged worst. The girls flew before the thunder of voice and flash of whip; the Swedish gardener left his birthright of song untouched, and followed them: he is skylarking with them now up in the great loft; they have pulled up the ladder, and are pelting one another with last year's hay. The cow-girl, a wench from Hittedal, lured the cattle and goats and long-legged heifer calves deeper into the woods with her quaint Lokke song, calling,-- "Come, sweet breath, come cowslip, come rich milk, Aa lukelei aa lura, lura, luralai!" Only the housemaid, who is consumptive, and who stays for the little mistress's sake, her own days in the land being numbered, has taken her Bible up to the lookout in the wood, and laid it open on the stone table. She is crushing the Linnae, as she kneels, into a fragrant incense, rocking to and fro to the somber rhythm of the last book of Ecclesiastes. And the master of them all is sitting exhausted in his big chair, and Marie Larsen and he are doing battle. She came on the scene just as the grand retreat was sounded, and took the enemy by stratagem. She lifted the little mistress bodily up, and carried her upstairs, leaving him, as she puts it, "to ramp like a bull of Basan below." She lays her on her bed, takes off her shoes, pulls down the blind, and pours out some drops out of a little blue bottle she carries in her pocket, talking as she might to a child: "There, Tulla, take naptha drops, very good drops; you go sleep, good sleep; Marie mind him, Marie not afraid," and with a final pat she goes down. He is laughing between his oaths at the stampede of petticoats, and he holds out his arms when she comes in.